player character lich


Advice


hello everyone.

We are playing a mid tier *evil* campaign right now , and the wizard would like to turn into a lich in the long run.

we looked at the lich template , noticed its CR +2
What does it mean for players ... is it equivalent to 2 levels ?
like after the required ritual , the magic overpower him and he loose two levels ?

looking at all the bonuses (DR , touch attack , paralysis etc)
it seem that a lich would be more powerful than a wizard two level higher ...
how do you guys deal with that ?

we are also opened to use almost all third party stuff (unless DM decide its utterly broken)

thanks

Shadow Lodge

Basically, he'd have to be kept two levels lower than the rest of the group.

However, there are alternatives. If you have Horror Adventures, there's a method for slowly becoming a lich over installments. The corruption will last as long as the GM decides, and carries drawbacks with it. Normally, you're supposed to try to hold back and get it cured, and if it progresses too far, the GM gets to take away your character sheet. The GM can tinker with it, the player can see the corruption as a means to an end, and the book as a Simple Lich Template the GM can apply to the character at just CR +1.

Either way, the GM could also rule one or two negative levels that never go away, or allow the PC to stay as-is, with the caveat that the new lich is smashed to bits at 0 HP, and the others had better have his spellbooks and all his stuff when he rejuvenates.

Also, since you're all evil, you might not have a pressing need to point out that Paralyzing Touch requires the wizard to be next to someone, and calls for a Fort save. Generally, the kind of stuff that tries to get right next to wizards tend to have Fort as their best saves. But hey, rejuvenation!


thanks for the advice , i might have to take a look at horror adventures

any other book out there could help ?


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>it seem that a lich would be more powerful than a wizard two level higher ...

Good joke. Lich isn't worth two wizard levels and 200-whatever thousands of gold he would need for his phylactery, unless you are looking for flavor. Wizard levels are really good, and 200 thousand gold buys you a lot of stuff. Powerful stuff.

But from a mechanical perspective, yes, CR +2 is supposed to be equal to two levels, so he will have to downgrade by two levels. I'd honestly suggest just giving the rest of the party some free templates instead and waving away the cost of the transition.

>we are also opened to use almost all third party stuff

If you aren't using Path of War yet, you should.


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I would advise against allowing any templates for player characters. The CR adjustment is to give you an idea of how powerful the creature will be for purpose of XP when defeated. Many of the abilities you get from a template have long range implications that really don’t affect how powerful the creature is in combat, but give significant advantages to a player character compared to the other players. The Lich’s Phylactery is a perfect example of this. The only way I would allow a character to use a template is if all characters are using the same template.

Try this as an experiment write up two versions of the character. One of the versions is as a lich; the other is two levels higher. Than run a combat against both versions and see which one is more difficult. You’re going to find the lich version is a hell of a lot tougher than the one two levels higher. Than factor in the fact that even if the party was able to defeat the lich they did not really kill it. The lich’s Phylactery is hidden safely away from where you fought him so he simply reforms in 1d10 days. Do you really want to give this kind of power to one of your players?

I have not seen Horror Adventures, but the fact that if you become a lich the GM is supposed to take away your character shows at some point it becomes unbalanced.


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Adventure Path Charter Subscriber; Pathfinder Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber
Mysterious Stranger wrote:
You’re going to find the lich version is a hell of a lot tougher than the one two levels higher. Than factor in the fact that even if the party was able to defeat the lich they did not really kill it. The lich’s Phylactery is hidden safely away from where you fought him so he simply reforms in 1d10 days. Do you really want to give this kind of power to one of your players?

The issue isn't so much the ability to come back (reincarnated druids and clonemaster alchemists have similar abilities; plus, there's always contingency), but all of the undead and lich special abilities: DR 15/bludgeoning and magic; fear aura; immunity to ability drain, bleed, cold, death effects, disease, electricity, energy drain, paralysis, physical ability score damage, poison, sleep effects, stunning; etc.


Dragonchess Player wrote:
Mysterious Stranger wrote:
You’re going to find the lich version is a hell of a lot tougher than the one two levels higher. Than factor in the fact that even if the party was able to defeat the lich they did not really kill it. The lich’s Phylactery is hidden safely away from where you fought him so he simply reforms in 1d10 days. Do you really want to give this kind of power to one of your players?
The issue isn't so much the ability to come back (reincarnated druids and clonemaster alchemists have similar abilities; plus, there's always contingency), but all of the undead and lich special abilities: DR 15/bludgeoning and magic; fear aura; immunity to ability drain, bleed, cold, death effects, disease, electricity, energy drain, paralysis, physical ability score damage, poison, sleep effects, stunning; etc.

Which is actually easier to come by for less expense as a wizard two levels higher.

Most of the immunities aren't even a factor - if they ever come into play, it's only because there's something that can't be effectively handwaived away magic due to arbitration by the GM, or the wizard player isn't playing the wizard yo to its full potential; there is nothing wrong with this, but it means that be lich isn't really all that: it boils down to a minor power upgrade and a handful of conveniences for a tremendous expense. There are a few things - immunity to things that don't work on objects - that under get that are nice, but there are other templates that are worthwhile, and if you're going +2, go big or go home: lich sucks compared to its fellow +2s, and requires a fair bit more arbitration and expense to set up in the first place.


Older post I made on comparative lichdom cost and relative ease of access and benefits. Hope that helps!

(To be clear: I've always thought the idea of liches were awesome: it's the practice and cost in comparison to other options that's a bit lacking.)

EDIT: oh, autocorrect...


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Tacticslion wrote:

Older post I made on comparative lichdom cost and relative ease of access and benefits. Hope that helps!

(To be clear: I've always thought the idea of lichens were awesome: it's the practice and cost in comparison to other options that's a bit lacking.)

I don't know, blurring the line between plant and fungus is pretty common in fantasy...


The Sideromancer wrote:
Tacticslion wrote:

Older post I made on comparative lichdom cost and relative ease of access and benefits. Hope that helps!

(To be clear: I've always thought the idea of lichens were awesome: it's the practice and cost in comparison to other options that's a bit lacking.)

I don't know, blurring the line between plant and fungus is pretty common in fantasy...

Well played, good sir, well played... :D


Being able to ignore any spell that requires fortitude save (which is the wizard’s weak save) is a lot more useful than you think. They are also immune to all mind affecting spells (charms, compulsions, morale effects, patterns and phantasms). Then factor in complete immunity to two out of the four elemental damage types (cold and electricity). Between these ability the lich is outright immune to a good majority of the spells, and those that do affect him tend to target will save which is his strongest save.

The lich also has an unlimited use touch attack that deals negative energy. This means he can heal himself up to full in almost no time without have to use any spells or abilities. Since he is immunity ability damage HP damage is really the only thing he has to worry about. So the lich is always at full strength when you fight him.

Most of the Lich’s defenses directly shore up the weaknesses of the wizard. This means that he is now free to devote those resources that he used to have to use to survive to other purposes. As a GM run monster that is not all that bad, but as a player character it creates an imbalance in the party. Basically once the wizard becomes a lich he really does not need the rest of the party.


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Mysterious Stranger wrote:

Being able to ignore any spell that requires fortitude save (which is the wizard’s weak save) is a lot more useful than you think.

I wouldn't recommending ignoring a Disintegrate, which happens to be a spell that requires a fortitude save.

Mysterious Stranger wrote:

They are also immune to all mind affecting spells (charms, compulsions, morale effects, patterns and phantasms).

There's a lot wrong here, too. There are metamagic feats and a Psychic phrenic amplification to allow mind-affecting to hurt a Lich. The Psychic doesn't even suffer level adjustment. A 16th level Psychic with Euphoric Tranquility and Will of the Dead will always be able to kill any Lich than he can touch. (Just like he can 1v1 anything else, Lich just gets no benefits.)

Possession will also kill a Lich just fine.


Plausible Pseudonym wrote:
Mysterious Stranger wrote:

Being able to ignore any spell that requires fortitude save (which is the wizard’s weak save) is a lot more useful than you think.

I wouldn't recommending ignoring a Disintegrate, which happens to be a spell that requires a fortitude save.

Mysterious Stranger wrote:

They are also immune to all mind affecting spells (charms, compulsions, morale effects, patterns and phantasms).

There's a lot wrong here, too. There are metamagic feats and a Psychic phrenic amplification to allow mind-affecting to hurt a Lich. The Psychic doesn't even suffer level adjustment. A 16th level Psychic with Euphoric Tranquility and Will of the Dead will always be able to kill any Lich than he can touch. (Just like he can 1v1 anything else, Lich just gets no benefits.)

Possession will also kill a Lich just fine.

There are always corner cases to get around a rule so I really don't think his points have been negated. Many of these corner cases won't show up in most games.

PS: I was not talking about disintegrate. I was more talking about the very specific feats and a class with a specific spell that is not common.


Well, since you're open to 3rd party, the Sphere's of Power expansion has an archetype called lichling which is pretty much tailored made to make a playable pc lich.1


How vital is it that you're mechanically a lich? Could you not cobble together something with a lich flavour without full lich mechanics? An idea could be to use the half-undead race (I believe it's an example of crating new races in the Advance Race Guide) and use slotless magical item creation cost guidelines to buy powers, abilities etc. with the gold you pay for the phylactery.


Yes there are ways to affect a lich with magic that he is normally immune to. But if every caster has those feats the player is going to be calling foul, and rightfully so. If the GM has to rewrite everything to deal with your character than the balance of the campaign has already been thrown off. This is one of the reasons I recommended not using templates. Often time the GM has two choices. The first is to allow the player an unfair advantage over the rest of the party. The second is to rewrite practically everything to counter your special abilities. In either case the balance of the party is throw off.

I am not saying that there are not ways to deal with a lich. What I am saying is that if the rest of the party does not have the same, or at least similar abilities it creates an unbalance in the game. If the GM is running a high powered campaign where all the characters are equally powerful that is fine. What is not fine is when one character has that significant of an advantage. Mixing templated characters in a normal campaign is going to lead to a huge imbalance.


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Mysterious Stranger wrote:

Basically once the wizard becomes a lich he really does not need the rest of the party.

Let me stop you right here.

This can be rephrased as the following:

"Basically, once the wizard becomes eleventh level, he really does not need the rest of the party."

Lichdom is one way of doing that. But it's not a very good way. Most of the best ways are available in Core.

A lich can still be easily overwhelmed - action economy kills, badly, no matter who you are. Lichdom isn't the "best" (as in most powerful) thing to do with all that wealth or cost. If you've paid the price of taking the Craft Wondrous Item feat, are charging the uncharted territory of "items players normally can't make" (but are rules legal) and are worried about power... grant the other PCs ~ 240k worth of "decent but not ludicrous" chachkes.

If I wanted immortality, there are lots of easier ways. Faster and cheaper, too.

Lichdom isn't the worst thing that could happen to a person, but two more levels of wizard are far and away superior.

EDIT: a large chunk of that sentence vanished for some reason. I put it back.


Tacticslion wrote:
Mysterious Stranger wrote:

Basically once the wizard becomes a lich he really does not need the rest of the party.

Let me stop you right here.

This can be rephrased as the following:

"Basically, once the wizard becomes eleventh level, he really does not need the rest of the party."

Lichdom is one way of doing that. But it's not a very good way. Most of the best ways are available in Core.

A lich can still be easily overwhelmed - action economy kills, badly, no matter who you are. Lichdom isn't the "best" (as in most powerful) thing to do with all that wealth or cost. If you've paid the price of taking the Craft Wondrous Item feat, are charging the uncharted territory of "items players normally can't make" (but are rules legal) and are worried about power... grant the other PCs ~ 240k worth of "decent but not ludicrous" chachkes.

If I wanted immortality, there are lots of easier ways. Faster and cheaper, too.

Lichdom isn't the worst thing that could happen to a person, but two more levels of wizard are far and away superior.

EDIT: a large chunk of that sentence vanished for some reason. I put it back.

You seem to be missing the whole point of what I am saying. What I am saying is that adding any template to a single member of the party is a bad idea. This applies equally to other classless and other templates. Templates change the nature of the game and unless all the characters are at least similarly changed it creates an imbalance. This is not necessarily about power, but rather how the game plays out.

I have to disagree with you that a 11th level wizard does not need the rest of the party. A wizard alone against a group of monster is at a severe disadvantage. As you said yourself the action economy makes it difficult for a single character to deal with moderately large groups. If a lich can be overwhelmed so can the ordinary wizard.


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Mysterious Stranger wrote:

Basically once the wizard becomes a lich he really does not need the rest of the party.

Tacticslion wrote:

Let me stop you right here.

This can be rephrased as the following:

"Basically, once the wizard becomes eleventh level, he really does not need the rest of the party."

Lichdom is one way of doing that. But it's not a very good way. Most of the best ways are available in Core.

A lich can still be easily overwhelmed - action economy kills, badly, no matter who you are. Lichdom isn't the "best" (as in most powerful) thing to do with all that wealth or cost. If you've paid the price of taking the Craft Wondrous Item feat, are charging the uncharted territory of "items players normally can't make" (but are rules legal) and are worried about power... grant the other PCs ~ 240k worth of "decent but not ludicrous" chachkes.

If I wanted immortality, there are lots of easier ways. Faster and cheaper, too.

Lichdom isn't the worst thing that could happen to a person, but two more levels of wizard are far and away superior.

EDIT: a large chunk of that sentence vanished for some reason. I put it back.

Mysterious Stranger wrote:

You seem to be missing the whole point of what I am saying. What I am saying is that adding any template to a single member of the party is a bad idea. This applies equally to other classless and other templates. Templates change the nature of the game and unless all the characters are at least similarly changed it creates an imbalance. This is not necessarily about power, but rather how the game plays out.

I have to disagree with you that a 11th level wizard does not need the rest of the party. A wizard alone against a group of monster is at a severe disadvantage. As you said yourself the action economy makes it difficult for a single character to deal with moderately large groups. If a lich can be overwhelmed so can the ordinary wizard.

Believe it or not, I'm not missing your point.

My point is related to yours.

You're worried about party imbalance.

I'm explaining that party imbalance is already present.

If you don't think an 11th level wizard can drop the rest of the party, you're not optimizing hard enough. And that's not a bad thing. Wizards are ludicrous, if left to their own, entirely-unhindered devices.

You're looking at it all wrong, however.

The minimum requirement for a character to gain lichdom is 240k worth of stuff.

Where is a character going to get 240 k at eleventh level?

Really think about that. At what point in a character's lifetime, is it reasonable to assume that someone has 240k worth of liquid assets to burn on a phylactery when they're eleventh level?

That's an insane amount of money to spend on a singular fail-point, and a ritual that isn't even guaranteed to work.

Lichdom comes with some decent stuff. It's not worth what you pay for it, money-wise or character-wise, and it's not worth the risk getting there, and it'd take a fool to believe differently.

First, I'm going to go on a story tangent:

Character reasons why lichdom isn't worth it:

There are not one, but two "failed" lich templates/statbock-things - one for when you mess up on the way to lichdom, and the other for when you don't properly care for yourself and/or get too bored after-the-fact. Not only that, but lichdom doesn't even come with that much of a guarantee: it could just fizzle out completely. If so, then no lichdom, nothing to show for it, and you're evil, dead, and have a bunch of enemies that guarantee you won't be raised, even if you could be; also, you've spent a literal lifetime of wasted wealth on nothing. Well done.

If you do succeed? You've expended enough wealth to gain an amount of power to roughly rival two levels... over the course of a lifetime of hard work. Two levels that don't really equal the amount of power that you could actually wield with two levels of power. Even if you don't think in terms of "levels of power" you could literally have reached one entire tier of magic more than you've managed to date, done so faster, and easier, with less of a chance of total annihilation via adventurers, rivals, poverty, or yourself... plus you'd be closer to be able to afford it (though not quite there). You've gained some nice benefits, but you've not gained other nicer benefits by expending inordinate resources on something that you could have gained anyway, and at a faster rate (as I'm assuming you're doing something safer than adventuring, if you're worried about being safe, which slows down your financial gain a lot).

But I picked 11th level for a very specific reason.

11th level is where casters can (note can, not should) have the ability to ascend into godlike status with conjuration abuse. They gain the power to dominate action economy, and the only real questions become, "Do I have more?" and "Are mine more powerful?" (which might not matter, if you have enough of the "more", depending on what those "more" are).

Wizards, especially, are notorious about this.

11th level is the level at which wizards don't even need magic items to do ludicrous shenanigans, like "Snow Cone Wish Machines" (mind you, I like those shenanigans), because 11th level is when wizards gain personal access to 6th level spells, and the universe bends over and says, "Thank you, Mam-and/or-Sir, may I have another!" until the wizard feels like being finished.

... at least if the wizard feels like building to do that sort of thing. If the wizard doesn't feel like building to do that sort of thing, or doesn't know how, or the group has an unspoken and/or unwritten (or spoken or written or both) agreement not to do that sort of thing, than of course the wizard will not.

But as I pointed out in my earlier link, a lich is roughly a 240k value. It's priced decently for a continuous 8th level spell effect.

If you're worried about relative power levels, but want to give each person something different:
- one person can be a lich
- one person could have a staff of power
- one person can have a sentient luckblade (three wishes) that can use reincarnate 3/day, with the special purpose to restore its dedicated master to life after they die (master being the named PC). {could, instead, be a +9 whatever weapon, or something; Ego score of 19; has: empathy, telepathy, 120 ft. senses, darkvision, blindsense, read language, read magic; could exchange some things for higher mental stats, but... meh?}
- one person could have a continuous 8th level spell effect
- one person can be a vetala vampire

I guarantee you, if I were in that game, and given my choice of all of those, I'd have a hard time choosing between the last three, and by a huge margin at that - especially if I were worried about going around adventuring in "safe mode" or something. As a GM, I might be lenient and bump the power of the lich and staff people a bit. They kind of get short-changed, a tad, there.

Lich has some nice stuff that PCs don't have.

If I were offered, "11th level wizard?" or "11th level wizard plus lich, no downsides?" I'd take the latter - because, you know, "no downsides" - but there are downsides, and those are most notably not being able to be things that are better than a lich. And if there is any sort of a cost adjustment, if that 240k comes out of the PC's pocket, or if there's anything else going on, save the money and shop elsewhere. It's not worth it.

You're looking at it as, "Don't give the one PC free stuff and the others nothing!"

I'm mentioning, "Don't make the one PC pay two levels for something that isn't worth two levels."

Two different points, not mutually exclusive.

:)


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I think Mysterious Stranger was referring to a mid level optimized wizard lich.

If someone goes into super character optimization wizard mode the template won't be needed to solo encounters. It is just additional help or insurance.


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wraithstrike wrote:

I think Mysterious Stranger was referring to a mid level optimized wizard lich.

If someone goes into super character optimization wizard mode the template won't be needed to solo encounters. It is just additional help or insurance.

That's kind of what I'm saying, though.

If the wizard isn't super-optimized, balance isn't that hard to achieve.

Just give ~240k worth of stuff to people. Hence my five examples of nearly-identical value of stuff.

(Bumping that staff of power up to a +3 would work, but I'd recommend letting it do something cool rather than just getting a generic "plus" to it - probably make it a rod of the python in addition, ignoring the quarterstaff part, and thus shaving off ~4k gold, making it ~ +9k to the value, or ~244k-value... I'd call it "close enough" for me!)

((If the thing seems too costly - somehow, though I can't imagine how - I'd suggest it must use the magical what's-its from the staff on the owner's whims only as a snake, and maybe make it an coiled armband or something really cool, instead of staff, making you turn it into a cool snake thing that does your magic stuff for you, but now I'm just waxing silly. I do that at 1:44 AM.))


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What I am looking at is the fact that a lot of things that limit and inconvenience normal characters no longer have any effect on the lich. AS a GM those are part of my bag of tricks that allow me to make the adventure interesting. High level adventures are difficult enough to run without having a character that can ignore many of the things that other players need to deal with. If everyone in the group were to have a similar template that changes things dramatically. I could see a campaign where the players are all undead, but where one character has a template and the other do never ends well.

I speak form experience on this. I have played a character in a game like this, and my character was the one with the template and he completely overpowered the rest of the group. The campaign ended because the other players were tired of playing spear carrier. I have also been in other campaigns where this has been done and every time it starts out cool, but ends badly.

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